Washington, DC--The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that Philips Lighting North America (Somerset, NJ) won the first award under the DOE's Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (L Prize) competition for its 60 W light-emitting diode or LED bulb. The L Prize challenged the lighting industry to develop super-high-performance, energy-saving replacements for conventional light bulbs that will save American consumers and businesses money.
Arun Majumdar, DOE senior advisor to the Secretary and director of Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), announced Philips Lighting North America as the first winner in the 60 W replacement bulb category—one of the most widely used lighting types. Philips developed the highly efficient LED lighting product to meet the rigorous requirements of the L Prize competition, whereby performance, quality, lifetime, cost, and availability meet expectations for widespread adoption and mass manufacturing. Considering that buildings in the U.S. consume roughly 70% of the electricity generated across the country, the prize-winning bulb support the DOE’s efforts to reduce our nation's energy use, create manufacturing jobs for U.S. workers, and save money for American families and business owners.
The winning Philips product excelled through rigorous short-term and long-term performance testing carried out by independent laboratories and field assessments conducted with utilities and other partners. The product also performed exceedingly well through a series of stress tests, in which the product was subjected to extreme conditions such as high and low temperatures, humidity, vibration, high and low voltage, and various electrical waveform distortions. The LED bulb from Philips could arrive in stores as soon as early 2012.
Launched in 2008, DOE's first L Prize category targets the 60 W bulb because it is one of the most widely used types of light bulbs by consumers, representing roughly half of the domestic incandescent light bulb market. The L Prize challenge sets the goal for the winning product's energy performance extremely high. The bulbs must use less than 10 W of power, providing an energy savings of 83%. If every 60 W incandescent bulb in the U.S. was replaced with the 10-watt L Prize winner, the nation would save about 35 TW hours of electricity or $3.9 billion in one year and avoid 20 million metric tons of carbon emissions.
As the first L Prize entrant in the 60-watt category to successfully meet the full competition requirements, Philips will receive a $10 million cash prize as well as L Prize partner promotions and incentives. To date, 31 utilities and energy efficiency program partners stand ready to promote and develop markets for the winning product.
SOURCE: DOE; www.lightingprize.org/philips-winner.stm
